The American, from the beginning, has been the most ardent of recorded rhetoricians. His politics bristles with pungent epithets; his whole history has been bedizened with tall talk; his fundamental institutions rest as much upon brilliant phrases as upon logical ideas.

The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, 2nd ed. (1921)
This classic bridges the discrepancies between British and American English and defines the distinguishing characteristics of the language of the United States.